Six Member States - Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus and Luxembourg - exceeded their milk quotas in 2011/2012, triggering "superlevy" penalties of about € 79 million, according to Commission figures published today. Despite the overrun of the quotas in these six Member States, total EU deliveries remained well below the global quota volume (-4.7%).

According to national declarations, Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus and Luxembourg exceeded their national quotas by a total of 283 000 tons, despite the 1% quota increase in the year 2011/2012 decided in the framework of the 2008 CAP Health Check. The Netherlands also exceeded also its direct sales quota, while the other Member States exceeded only their quota for deliveries.

The number of Member States exceeding their quotas remains limited and the concerned surplus production accounts for less than 0.2% of all milk delivered or covered by direct sales. Several Member States produced far below their respective national quota; 10 Member States recorded deliveries at least 10% below their quota.

In the 2010/2011 quota year 2010/2011, penalties worth €55.6m were triggered in 5 Member States and overall EU deliveries were 5.5% below the total EU quota volume.

Background

The dairy quota system was introduced in the 1980s in order to address problems of surplus production. Each Member State has two quotas, one for deliveries to dairies, the other one for direct sales at farm level. These quantities are distributed among producers (individual quotas) in each Member State. The quota regime will be abolished in April 2015. The 2008 CAP health Check agreed that there should be a gradual increase in quotas (+1% every year) until then.

Where there is an overrun of the national quota, a surplus levy – or "superlevy" - is payable in the Member State concerned by the producers in proportion to their contribution to the overrun during the quota year (1 April - 31 March). The overrun is established after a redistribution of non-used quota of other producers. The levy is € 27.83 per 100kg of overrun. Each year before 1 September, the Member States must report to the Commission the results of the application of the milk quota scheme over the previous period. This notification must be in the form of a complete questionnaire containing all the data needed to calculate the surplus levy.